Pala or Priest for Cata?

[thadius]

hi, i have an 80 pala and priest. I primarily played my pala as a tank ms holy os in wotlk. i'm all tanked out for now and i want to focus on primarily one for cata. I can't quite make up my mind for which to play since i want to heal and os dps for cata.

on one hand i like ranged dps component of spriests better than pala since i've only really done ret dps in wotlk with tiny bit of shadow play in there. (i loved the range dps aspect of the game from this)
on another hand i like the changes that holy seems to be getting, and when i do liesurely pvp i utterly suck as a clothy so it would be alot harder for me on my priest (but keep in mind my primary focus is always hardcore pve)

what do you guys think i should play in cata? personal opinions and pro's and cons are always welcomed.

thanks in advance for reading/replying

---------- Post added 2010-10-06 at 10:54 PM ----------

i also could renew my subscription and lvl my 53 druid to 80 and not have to make this choice because i love druids to death and would raise him 100% if i got him 80 first

[Deleted]

I kind of was in the same boat as you, but after playing on the beta for weeks i know my choice will be Priest, hands down.

- Tanking is one of the most boring aspect of the game therefore priest.
- Retribution is completely broken and will be underdog comming casterclysm (only thing that can fix them is getting dispel back and or sacred shield).
- Holy is kind of OK, but healing is way still too low in numbers (will probably get tuned up though). More spells to toy around with, but both AoE heals are quite weak so we still nisch into tank healers.
- Shadow is INSANELY fun. Blizzard know that the dmg is abit low so this will be buffed for sure.
- Chakra (holy talent), Archangel (disc talent), Life Grip (new spell) <3 them.

- Paladin pet is kind of fail imo. Rarely use it.
- Holy Radiance costs SHITLOAD of mana and doesnt heal much as i said earlier.
- Inquisition is the worst skill in Cataclysm so far.


These thoughts are taken from Beta gameplay, and YES i know numbers aren't final and spells may change, but face it. It's too much to change without making Paladins OP again.

[Deleted]

Firstly....Paladin Forums!!!!!

Secondly if your planning on quitting Paladin based on BETA experience than i really don't know what to say. Good bye!

[Asur]

I kind of was in the same boat as you, but after playing on the beta for weeks i know my choice will be Priest, hands down.

- Tanking is one of the most boring aspect of the game therefore priest.
- Retribution is completely broken and will be underdog comming casterclysm (only thing that can fix them is getting dispel back and or sacred shield).
- Holy is kind of OK, but healing is way still too low in numbers (will probably get tuned up though). More spells to toy around with, but both AoE heals are quite weak so we still nisch into tank healers.
- Shadow is INSANELY fun. Blizzard know that the dmg is abit low so this will be buffed for sure.
- Chakra (holy talent), Archangel (disc talent), Life Grip (new spell) <3 them.

- Paladin pet is kind of fail imo. Rarely use it.
- Holy Radiance costs SHITLOAD of mana and doesnt heal much as i said earlier.
- Inquisition is the worst skill in Cataclysm so far.


These thoughts are taken from Beta gameplay, and YES i know numbers aren't final and spells may change, but face it. It's too much to change without making Paladins OP again.

Um, have you been on the PTR? its retarded high

[Deleted]

Um, have you been on the PTR? its retarded high

he's talking beta, and thus not about stat inflated gear.

[UnholyGrazer]

On topic: I hate when people say Pala when refering to Paladins...
Pally is wrong wrong but for some reason I find when people say Pala, I have to hit something.

Also I noticed in trade chat, Shadow Priests over time have become more abbreviated...
Shadow Priest - Spriest - and now it's SP according to some.
I don't know about you but SP means Spell Power to me.

[tab]

From a pvp aspect I would recommend paladin. Their ability to keep high health targets up is 2nd to druids. Not bad. Priests shields just aren't going to be what they were back in vanilla, and even worse in cata. Paladins scale way too well compared to priests. The problem with priests is that their healing talents are divided between 2 trees. Every other healer only has one tree. Disc has no scaling save power word shield which still has the 15 second debuff. Now they are increasing the cooldown. Divine aegis and shields dont mix. From a pve aspect, paladins are the same as holy priests, but better than disc. Don't waste your time with priests if you want to be the better more easily.

[Deleted]

On topic: I hate when people say Pala when refering to Paladins...
Pally is wrong wrong but for some reason I find when people say Pala, I have to hit something.

You Sir should see a psychologist. Seriously.

And lol shield priests are not the same? What have you been smoking? :X


Anyway back to topic; Of course you should play what fits you the best, i - personally - see alot more potential in priests than in paladins AT THE MOMENT.

[Kyeguywar]

I would go shadow/holy offspec with priest the new move lifegrip will be really fun!

[danoob777]

From my experience in beta so far the healers really are a lot closer together now than they were in WotLK so you probably won't have much difference in enjoyment healing weather you are priest/pally. PvP I think that with the inflated Health Pools the paladin is going to pull pretty far ahead, because of the plate and shield mitigating a significant amount of physical damage, as well as slightly more consistent on demand mana regen (we'll see if archangel proves viable for pvp regen though).

From a PvE perspective I think that a shadowpriest is the way to go. They will share gear with your holy/disc spec to a great degree with spirit to hit talent so you will be able to fill more roles easier (and with less bag space taken).

TL/DR if you like to pvp heal I would go pally, if you like to pve I would go priest.

[thadius]

thank's for all the responses everyone, and the general consensus seems to lean towards my personal preference of priest because i love pve and ranged dps > melee in just my personal liking. thanks for inputs and any other considerations or fresh perspectives are always welcome of course =D

[Luthius]

I have both classes & despite of all the qq I'm seeing on these forums, I still will be playing my Paladin, Retribution.

I didn't play it in Vanilla cause it wasn't available for Horde, I played it at TBC (Retribution) & through Wrath before I quit 6 monthes ago, there is no way on earth that the new Cataclysm Paladin will be worse than TBC or even Vanilla. I met friends today who tried it on beta claiming it's really hard to adapt to compared to WoTLK Ret, I got even more excited for the expansion by just hearing that & surely hope all the FotM Paladins go back to their classes.

In short, I'm going to stick to my Paladin, Retribution.

I'm not a Blizzard fanboy, but it seems that they are very careful with buffing the Paladin class just to avoid their mistake happened in 3.0 & WotLK specially that they had to use huge amount of hotfixes & nerfs to the Class in order to neutralize its OPness yes we deserved it so yeah Blizzard is doing the Right thing. Even if Cataclysm is released & we're still like this, I'm sure that in a patch or two they're going to tweak stuff in it. What made them overhaul the class every expansion makes them fix it in order to keep it on par with other classes.

Feel free to agree or disagree with me =)

And well, having a level 85 Priest as an alt won't be a bad thing for me, along with the Rogue I got since I'm race changing it to a kickass Goblin ^^

[Ryme]

I'm very, very much on the fence. Regardless, I'm dropping ret. The new mechanics look terrible, procribution doesn't sound fun, and I can't help feeling how much a HUGE wasted opportunity holy power is. There was so much scope for this resource to be really interesting. Instead, it's just, stack it up and hit TV. Wow.

[Deleted]

I'm very, very much on the fence. Regardless, I'm dropping ret. The new mechanics look terrible, procribution doesn't sound fun, and I can't help feeling how much a HUGE wasted opportunity holy power is. There was so much scope for this resource to be really interesting. Instead, it's just, stack it up and hit TV. Wow.

Blizzard call it a new mechanism, but compared to Rogues (combo points into eviscerate) it's kinda lame copycat "invention".

These are my suggestion into regain Ret balance in pvp:
- Bring back cleanse
- Make more options for finishers (other than TV)



Simply as it is now, Rets are sitting ducks against any ranged class with snare. Some say L2P, some say L2adapt. It's not really the case, blizzard knows it. The question is are they gonna overhaul enough to make ret enjoyable in high lvl PvP ever.

End of QQ ;p

[Sanitarium]

Go priest, life grip peeps!